Glenn Greenwald to Write a Book

“Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first reported on a trove of classified documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, will write a book about National Security Agency surveillance,” reports Julie Bosman. But then, of course, the NSA probably knew about this already.

According to a recent survey, Danes are the happiest people in the world. This came as a surprise, writes Mathilde Walter Clark, to most of her fellow Scandinavians, who know very well the unhappier elements of their daily lives. The problem, she suggests, is that words like “happiness,” “ambition” and “contentment” have subtly different meanings in different languages -- in other words, happiness in Denmark isn’t the same thing as happiness in America. You could also read our own Emily St. John Mandel’sreview of the Danish writer Jonas T. Bengtsson’sA Fairy Tale.

"Like characters in a somewhat less swashbuckling Jack London novel, these are all characters, and writers, who are grappling with their environments." Our own Lydia Kieslingwrites for Salon about the “caucasian, Ivy-educated writers of literary fiction set in Brooklyn” and the novels they're producing, particularly the just-released-yesterdayFriendship by Emily Gould.

Following the news that Beyoncé sampled a TED talk given by Year in Reading contributor Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Tin House dug up an interview with the author, who says that to this day, when she looks at the manuscript of Americanah, she feels “thrilled and amazed that [she] actually finished writing this.”

“‘Man is hungry for beauty. There is a void.’ Nine words. Take a moment. Say them aloud. What else is there to be said?” -Arthur Krystal’sessay on Umberto Eco’sHistory of Beauty, at Powell's Books. (via Arts & Letters Daily)